Isaac Triguero

Based on the authors' extensive teaching experience, this hands-on graduate-level textbook teaches how to carry out large-scale data analytics and design machine learning solutions for big data. With a focus on fundamentals, this extensively class-tested textbook walks students through key principles and paradigms for working with large-scale data, frameworks for large-scale data analytics (Hadoop, Spark), and explains how to implement machine learning to exploit big data. It is unique in covering the principles that aspiring data scientists need to know, without detail that can overwhelm. Real-world examples, hands-on coding exercises and labs combine with exceptionally clear explanations to maximize student engagement. Well-defined learning objectives, exercises with online solutions for instructors, lecture slides, and an accompanying suite of lab exercises of increasing difficulty in Jupyter Notebooks offer a coherent and convenient teaching package. An ideal teaching resource for courses on large-scale data analytics with machine learning in computer/data science departments.

Thorsten and Isaac have written this book based on a programming course we teach for Master's Students at the School of Computer Science of the University of Nottingham. The book is intended for students with little or no background in programming coming from different backgrounds educationally as well as culturally. It is not mainly a Python course but we use Python as a vehicle to teach basic programming concepts. Hence, the words conceptual programming in the title. We cover basic concepts about data structures, imperative programming, recursion and backtracking, object-oriented programming, functional programming, game development and some basics of data science.